If only this was 70 minutes long...

Rating: 7/10 (8 August 2009)

Danny Boyle's apocalyptic postcard is as frustrating as it is brilliant. While the film's first two acts seem to suggest a classic in the making, the detour into redundancy climax and the limp ending derail the momentum Boyle builds throughout this often tense and truly scary visual delight. Perhaps there isn't a way to effectively pay off the superb opening salvos of 28 Days Later's set-up (I certainly can't think of one), but one can't help but wonder why Boyle chose to conclude such a thrilling and original concept with "man is the true monster" themes that George Romero guided to perfection decades earlier.
If this film is a disaster, however, it's a gorgeously realized disaster. The shots of Cillian Murphy's Jim wandering through deserted and decimated London streets are worth the film alone, and it's impossible not to marvel at how Boyle orchestrated such powerful and bleak images within a city that is always teeming with life. The digital camera work here was unparalleled at the time, and the infancy of the format lends a sense of documentary-style realism to every image that serves the plausibility of the entire scenario very well.
While most zombie-philes cried foul at the notion of the "creatures" in this film running at track-meet speeds toward their prey, this bit of criticism is the most undeserved. Firstly, there are no zombies in 28 Days Later. We are dealing with humans infected with a virus, which sort of negates all of the rules of the zombie epic. Secondly, if Boyle did somehow violate the mandates of zombie cinema (despite the fact this is not a zombie film), he certainly wasn't the first. Haven't these people seen Nightmare City? And the frenzied scene in the tunnel is one of the most exhilarating sequences in any horror film, ever, so it's hard to be too upset about Boyle's decision to think outside the lumbering box.
What Boyle is guilty of is taking such an incredibly well-realized concept and squandering it by diffusing every bit of tension he built along the way in the film's silly and disjointed third act. This film loses every shred of power it has when our weary survivors meet up with the military meatheads who end up being the ultimate antagonists of the film. 28 Days Later ceases being a horror film at this point and morphs into a standard revenge flick, in which we have to accept the transformation of a lowly bike messenger into a clever angel of death capable of overcoming trained military personnel armed with automatic weapons, who also somehow has the wherewithal to maneuver his way through the series of land mines and repellent safeguards we are introduced to during his visit.
It's also quite discomforting to learn that the impetus for these soldiers to turn from defenders of their country into Neanderthals devoid of moral fiber is something as base and animalistic as lust. It seems that even as the world around them is crumbling, the primary concern of this handful of people lucky enough to survive is getting laid. So much so that they are willing to murder innocents and disregard their humanity for a chance at some elusive nookie. Seeing them focus in on a girl who looks to be about 13 during this process adds an unsettling and sleazy undercurrent that is more than a bit uncomfortable to digest, as well. This entire subplot shifts the focus of the film so drastically it never recovers. Even the last bits of Rage-infected mayhem seem tacked on as an afterthought, and like the underlying theme, are lifted straight from Day Of The Dead.
Though the DVD offers three different endings to the affair, none of them bring this promising tale to a satisfying conclusion. The "bleak" ending seems to fit the tone of the film most effectively, but it's telling that Boyle originally opted for an upbeat and joyous finale that finds our heroes about to be rescued by what appears to be a military aircraft (because their experience with the military worked out so well before?). This scenario confuses the message even further. If man is the greatest of all evils, why are our survivors so ecstatic to find themselves delivered into the arms of a group of men the same class as those who, left to their devices, would have murdered the dissenting Jim and raped his two female counterparts?
So, this is definitely a film rife with flaws. But, for more than an hour, the world Boyle plunges us into is engrossing, realistic, and dramatically terrifying. The destination may be ugly, but the road getting there is full of beauty, and despite the ultimate implosion of the movie's immense promise, there are certainly enough flashes of brilliance here to recommend this film on many levels. It's just a shame that Boyle let such a near-classic slip through his fingers.